In what situation would you use pointers and what are they? As far as I can tell, they are just used to check the next value in a sequence.
Computer Science Canada Why Pointers |
| Author: | Danjen [ Tue Dec 12, 2006 10:44 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Why Pointers |
In what situation would you use pointers and what are they? As far as I can tell, they are just used to check the next value in a sequence. |
|
| Author: | ericfourfour [ Tue Dec 12, 2006 10:50 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
When dealing with variables, why send an entire copy of a variable if you only need a reference to its location? |
|
| Author: | Danjen [ Tue Dec 12, 2006 10:56 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
So like, it lets you get the value of a variable without typing in that variable's specific name?? |
|
| Author: | ericfourfour [ Tue Dec 12, 2006 11:08 pm ] | ||||
| Post subject: | |||||
If you want to be simple, I guess that sums it up. In Turing you can dereference but you cannot reference. That is one of the downsides of Turing.  There is a function called addr but it returns the address as an integer, not a pointer.
Dereference gets the variable the pointer is pointing to. Reference gets a pointer pointing to the variable. To dereference use:
A pointer inside a record:
|
|||||
| Author: | Danjen [ Wed Dec 13, 2006 9:13 am ] |
| Post subject: | |
Ah, okay that clears it up then  |
|
| Author: | Tony [ Wed Dec 13, 2006 11:45 am ] |
| Post subject: | |
Danjen wrote: So like, it lets you get the value of a variable without typing in that variable's specific name??
Better yet, you can switch where the pointer points to, and perform the same operations on a different "variable", without really needing to know which one exactly it is. |
|